Fun-loving sculptors of 7th century India

I’ve just returned from south India, where I spent several days visiting temples and archaeological sites in Tamil Nadu. This area is bristling with historic monuments, but one of the most impressive (and a key reason for my visit) was this carved rock-face at Mamallapuram, about 60km south of Chennai on the Coromandel Coast.

Mamallapuram was an important sea-port for the Pallava dynasty that ruled most of south India from the 6th to 8th century AD. The Pallava kings - notably Mahendravarman I and his son Narasimhavarman I of the early 7th century - were keen builders with an eye for beautiful architecture. The stretches of granite rock on this coastline provided ample material for their sculptors. The temples they built in Mamallapuram are of great historical significance, providing the template for subsequent religious buildings in south India. But for sheer attractiveness, it is difficult to beat this massive piece of free-form relief carving, 30m wide by 15m high.

The work is often referred to either as “Arjuna’s Penance” or “The Descent of the Ganges”, but no-one actually knows its original name, or indeed what it was for. None of that matters much when you are standing in front of it (cringing from the traffic that roars along inches behind you), because it is simply amazing. 

The rock-face is divided by a cleft down the middle, into which are carved two large images of naga (serpent) deities. The natural element of nagas is water, suggesting that the cleft represents a waterway or river. On the left is an image of the god Shiva, who once helped to channel the Ganges to avoid a flood, hence the suggested name “Descent of the Ganges”. But Shiva is also gesticulating towards a thin ascetic man standing on one leg with both arms raised (see below). Some believe that this is Arjuna, from the Indian epic Mahabharata, who performed a rigorous penance in order to persuade Shiva to grant him a weapon of deadly power. Surrounding these figures are a host of divine, human and animal images. It’s like a stone version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling: the more you look at it, the more you see.

It has been written about extensively but none of the studies prepares you for the playfulness and exuberance of the sculpture. Most commentators point out the mischievous cat who mimics Arjuna’s pose, attracting a group of gullible mice who will soon become lunch (below). But it was only when I stood in front of the rock-face that I noticed, for example, the jaunty little ganas (dwarves) who make up Shiva’s retinue. The cheeky one standing between Shiva and Arjuna looks like he’s about to give Arjuna a crafty shove to see if he can keep his balance.

A herd of elephants occupies the lower right quadrant, accompanied by their babies, one of whom is trailing behind but grinning cheerfully anyway (he’s obviously used to being left behind). On the upper left and right, the celestial beings are all giving you a cheery wave as they float by, looking so realistic that you involuntarily move your head to follow their flight. They seem to be in pairs or couples, each with a unique pose and expression that is quite unlike the systematized style of China's Terracotta Warriors. They reminded me of Olympic teams marching in the opening ceremony, full of happy optimism, waving to the crowd: at least, if Olympic teams were accompanied by pet lions with long curly tails. You get the feeling that the sculptors didn't feel the need to explain themselves.

It’s frustrating therefore that so little is known about the many different sculptures and monuments of Mamallapuram. We don’t know where the artists came from, how they learned their skills or why many of the works are unfinished. One suggestion is that Mamallapuram was a training ground for sculptors. This might explain why it contains what the historian Richard Blurton calls a “conspectus” or broad overview of rock-cut architectural styles, dotted all over the town.

Blurton also notes that the 'easy familiarity' and 'earthy' aspects of Pallava sculpture eventually gave way to the 'purest classical style' of the Cholas. In other words, south Indian sculpture became less fun and more restrained, which is a bit of a shame. But the fun-loving artists of Mammallapuram at least left their mark on other Pallava monuments, notably at the Kailasanatha temple in Kanchipuram, about 50km inland, which was the personal chapel of Narasimhavarman II of the 8th century. Below for example is an image of the goddess Durga with her lion companion, both displaying that air of bold liveliness that is so appealing.

And also at Kailasanatha, there is this wonderful image of the god Shiva in his long-haired mendicant form, baring his bum and (I swear) twerking. Perhaps after this, as Miley Cyrus discovered, there was just nowhere further to go.  

Reference material: Hindu Art (1992) by T Richard Blurton ; Indian Art (1997) by Vidya Dehejia

The Pensive Prince: beautiful art from a miserable time

This 6th century marble stele was the star attraction at this season’s sale of Chinese Buddhist art at Eskenazi in London. Despite its age, it still has traces of original gilding and paintwork. The central deity is in near-pristine condition, as are the nineteen attendant figures, two small dragons and the pair of lion-dogs under his feet. Arched above these figures are the scalloped leaves of a gingko tree. And that’s just the front! The 65cm-high stele is carved on the sides and back as well.

Although the deity is not named, this image is typically recognised as Maitreya, whom some Buddhists believe will return in future as the next incarnation of the Buddha. He sits in the so-called “pensive” pose: one leg over the other, his eyes downcast and his right hand held up to his cheek as he ponders the mysteries of life. The Chinese have a delightful name for this type of image: siwei taizi, the Pensive Prince. Given what was happening in China at the time, you couldn’t blame Maitreya for feeling pensive either.

The Eskenazi sale is called “Six Dynasties Art from the Norman A Kurland collection”, but nearly all the items come from the Northern Wei (386-534 AD) and Northern Qi (550-557 AD) dynasties. This places them at the latter end of the Six Dynasties period which stretched from the fall of the Han in 220 AD to the rise of the re-unifying Sui dynasty in 581 AD.

The history of this period is so complicated and depressing that it’s mostly glossed over in popular accounts (apart from the 3rd century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which doesn’t cover the remaining 300 years of misery). It was a prolonged period of chaos, with various clans scrapping over the remains of the Han empire while trying and failing to fend off the Tuoba invaders from the north. Eventually the Tuoba established the Northern Wei dynasty, occupying what is now the north-central half of modern China (see below). The southern half was ruled by an equally confused set of short-lived dynasties but fortunately that doesn’t concern us here.

It was during this time that Buddhism replaced Daoism and Confucianism as the main religion, possibly because its message of peace and re-birth was so attractive to people who had suffered decades of war. The Tuoba, who were Buddhists themselves, helped to promote the religion through their patronage of religious art. This continued under one of their successors, the Northern Qi, to which period our stele is dated.

Examples of this type of stele are relatively rare. One of the better-known is at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum (see below), also from the Northern Qi although in less good condition. The Smithsonian’s Freer Sackler Gallery has two: an unusual one with twin Maitreyas (see below) and one which it freely admits is a fake, sold to Charles Freer in 1909! That does suggest, though, how long there has been an interest in Six Dynasties Buddhist sculpture.

Source: Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

 Source: Freer Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian

Not all art from the period is as refined as this: there are a lot of comparatively workmanlike stone steles from the earlier 6th century. But they also have an interesting story to tell, because they were commissioned as acts of piety in anticipation of a coming apocalypse called the mofa. Followers of the Pure Land school of Buddhism were led to believe, based on totally accurate calculations of course, that the world would plunge into darkness and spiritual chaos in 552 AD. After this point, the cycle of re-birth that helps mortals to attain Nirvana would cease to function and their souls would wander lost forever. Their only hope was to be re-born instead into a pure land called Sukhavati but this was only for true believers. Commissioning a stele engraved with prayers for the merit of friends and family would help you to earn a place in Sukhavati. 

History doesn’t describe how the Pure Land devotees felt as the year 552 came and went, but luckily for us, this didn’t affect the practice of commissioning religious images as a merit-earning act. A close relative of our stele, found in Hebei Province in 1978, is dated 562 AD and bears an inscription from its donor stating “The beneficiaries of this pious act are the emperor, teachers and parents going back seven generations, all beings living and deceased, ordained clerics, as well as secular believers”. An interesting feature of our stele is that, for whatever reason, it is not inscribed.

Objects like the Maitreya stele are the reason why I study Chinese art: otherwise, I would never have heard of China’s Dark Ages, the Northern dynasties or the Pensive Prince. Looking at the stele five years ago, I would have been more impressed by the perfect little expressions on the faces of the lion-dogs. Which is not to say that they aren’t still my favourite feature. They’re irresistible! 

Reference material: "Six Dynasties Art from the Norman A Kurland Collection" (Eskenazi); "China: Dawn of a Golden Age" (Met Museum NY); "Wisdom Embodied" (Denise Patry Leidy);"Prince Moonlight: Messianism and Eschatology in Early Mediaeval Chinese Buddhism" (Erik Zurcher). 

The Emperor Jahangir's fantasy world

This 17th century painting, attributed to Abu’l Hasan, is one of the finest works in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin and certainly one of the most bizarre. Dating from 1616, it depicts the Mughal emperor Jahangir standing on a globe while furiously shooting arrows into the decapitated head of a black man. The globe rests on the back of a bull which is standing on a giant fish. An owl perches on top of the severed head while another seems to be falling off it. Celestial beings in the upper right corner reach down to offer Jahangir more weaponry.

 The answer to the question “what’s going on here?” is not a short one, but worth unpacking nonetheless. Firstly, the head is meant to be that of Malik Ambar, a former slave of Ethiopian origin who became a successful military leader in the Deccan region, fighting against Mughal expansion in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The Mughals struggled for decades to conquer the five Deccani sultanates; it was a long painful to-and-fro affair until Jahangir’s grandson Aurangzeb finished the job in the mid-17th century. At the time of this painting, Malik Ambar was very much alive and the whole Deccan business was a massive thorn in Jahangir’s side. He seems to have commissioned this allegorical fantasy in part to assuage his own raging frustration.

Source: New York Review of Books

The surrounding images are so complex that academic sources don’t always agree on their meaning, and a full discussion is beyond our scope here. One thing that stands out is Abu’l Hasan’s use of European imagery. The globe is not only a reference to Jahangir’s own imperial name (“he who seizes the world”) but seemingly also a nod to their popularity in European Renaissance art. The Mughal court was well acquainted with contemporary European painting thanks to gifts from Jesuit missionaries from as early as the mid-1500s. Jahangir (when not obsessing about his enemies) had a keen and enquiring mind, and was much taken with this new field of art. In a way, this portrait is a distant cousin of Holbein’s The Ambassadors, another work packed with allegorical references, including a hidden skull and (yes) some globes. The little weapons-merchants in the upper right rather resemble Italian Renaissance putti, while also harking back to the celestial beings seen in classical Indian sculpture.

The art historian GA Bailey has pointed to the tiny Persian text inscriptions beside each key image as another feature seen in European Renaissance art. The one beside Malik Ambar’s head reads: “The head of the night-coloured servant has become the house of the owl”. While owls certainly had a bad rep in Indian superstition, this text also reminded me of the “habitation of dragons and a court for owls” in the Book of Isaiah; indeed, the furious speech of God’s Judgement on the Nations (read it here) could be Jahangir raging about the Deccan. The idea that this image has Christian metaphorical overtones isn’t far fetched: we know about the Jesuit connections, and on the globe Abu’l Hasan has included an image of a lion lying down peacefully with a deer or antelope. In the companion piece to this painting (“Jahangir slaying poverty”), the biblical imagery is even more distinct.

Abu’l Hasan is careful to tie it back to Indian and Islamic imagery, however, as the Mughals were Muslims after all, albeit rather liberal at times. The bull and the fish are common images in Indian art, and the artist knew that his audience could make its own references to Matsya the giant fish (avatar of Vishnu), Nandi the bull (companion of Shiva) and so on. But he may also have been referring to an idea amongst some mediaeval Islamic scholars that the earth rested on a bull and a fish.  For example, there is a striking similarity with this image from a 13th century illustration by Islamic mystical scholar Zakariya Qazwini, whose book Ajaib al-Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation) was just the sort of thing that curious Jahangir would have loved.

Source: US Library of Congress

The main aim, I suspect, was to show Jahangir at the very centre of a painting filled with Western, Islamic and Indian imagery, both ancient and modern, so as to underline his position as He Who Seizes the World - if he could only get rid of those pesky Deccan rebels! 

Happily, Malik Ambar lived on well into his seventies as a high-ranking courtier in the sultanate of Ahmednagar, even acting as regent at one point. It was not until years after his death that the sultanate finally succumbed to Mughal forces. Sunil Khilnani talks about him in his fascinating Radio 4 series Incarnations: India in 50 lives. If you have BBC iPlayer, you can access it here. 

Useful sources of information for this post included: "Sultans of Deccan India 1500-1700", Metropolitan Museum, NY; "The Indian Portrait, 1560-1860", Rosemary Crill; "Biblical Themes in Mughal Painting", SP Verma; and "The Spirit of Indian Painting", BN Goswamy. 

My memory of the phrase "habitation of dragons and a court for owls" comes from Gerald Durrell's "The Garden of the Gods", Corfu Trilogy, Book 3, Chap 4.

An update and two previews

Almost a year ago, I took a break from writing this blog after news of my mother's terminal illness. Since her death in April, I've been clearing up the family home and helping with estate matters, but I've also managed some art-related travel which has provided new stuff to write about. As a preview, here are two lovely things I saw.

The Chester Beatty Library in Dublin very kindly gave me access to their wonderful Akbarnama and even more wonderful Minto Album, a collection of  the finest Mughal miniatures. This detail (below) from a page of the Akbarnama exemplifies the focus and dedication of the artists. It's the bottom far-right corner of a page depicting a fight between Akbar and a nobleman at court. All the action is elsewhere but for the Mughal artists, detail was everything. Look at the men's clothing, the expressions on their faces (which are only about 5 millimetres high, by the way) and that gorgeous carpet! (Apologies for the poor picture quality, I really need a new phone with a better camera.)

At the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, I finally saw this famous Buddha, regarded as the earliest Chinese Buddha with a verifiable date (338 AD). It is in all the textbooks, but it wasn't until I saw it upfront that I realised, firstly, that it's taller than I expected (40cm high); and secondly, it is surprisingly cheerful. It's a very three-dimensional piece - it looks slightly different from each angle - but seen up close, it has a happy smile, like a shy cousin of the cheery Buddhas of Kushan India (which of course it is).

I'd hoped to visit the Indian and South-East Asian collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art but as the museum very thoughtfully closed the galleries for refurbishment without any warning on their website or at the ticket booth, having taken my $25 entry fee first, [deep breaths] there is nothing I can write about that. Except that it reminded me how lucky we are in the UK to have free access to museums. Looking at the state of things, I suspect that cannot last.